Birthday etc

My birthday snuck up on me, as it does every year. I never pay much attention to it until one day everyone starts wishing me a happy birthday and there are cards in the mailbox. So, now I can legally drink in the states and buy spirits in Finland! That is about all the difference in me from last week I am afraid.

This year my birthday was the day after I had got back from Prague so I was pretty tired and was planning on sleeping the whole day, but then my buddy texted and asked would I like to go climbing. I decided it might be an idea to do something I enjoy on my birthday, and I am glad that I went because for some reason I was much better than I had been the previous two wednesdays. I am reluctant to attribute this to the development of some previously unknown character facet at age 21, more likely it is because after two weeks of practice I have started to remember how to climb again.

Afterwards Mirva came round, I cooked delicious Risotto (all my food LOOKS ugly but is in fact delicious, like a superhero with an alter ego. Only it is a food) and she made this delicious cake thing that wasn't really a cake because you don't have to cook it. It had a biscuit base but it wasn't a cheesecake either as the topping was made of whisked egg and cream and chocolate. Whatever, the foamcake (TM) was very tasty, even if it didn't set until the next day so we first ate it as a kind of chunky milkshake... Mirva bought me a moomin book for my birthday, following a conversation about how much we both liked the books (or in my case the one I have read). Apparently the author was Finnish and she lived alone on a tiny island off the coast of Finland. Cool.

On friday I went to a free concert at Mirva's school, they have them quite often so the students can actually perform stuff to people rather than just practice. It was great because you got a wide variety of composers, levels of difficulty and degrees of obscurity (as well as a variety of levels of piano skill). I think I might try and visit these evenings semi regularly, as they are a pretty good way of getting to know what I think is good. My buddy Ruth joined us for that, then we went off to the super cheap sushi restaurant for, well, you guess what for.

By the time we arrived and ordered our group had grown to include our new Iranian friends, their ex-german teacher Anna Lena (who has two first names), and Anna Lena's friend who was the brother of the guy who was her guide on a university trip to Benin and Togo. We spoke a lot of german, which was cool, and discussed the Voodoo/ Vodun/ whatever religion, because Anna Lena is studying religion and anthropology or something else cool and unusual. It turned out that Eric (i think that was his name?) was also a hereditary tribal prince, so that was also pretty cool. He doesn't get anything for it, but people would apparently respect him more than the average man if he were at home. After sushi we went to a bar in a shady looking aea behind the Westbahnhof where you can pay however much you want for a beer! Damned communists/lefty students! Actually the atmosphere was really nice, just like a house party really, not dangerous feeling at all. I would go there very often if not for the suffocating pall of smoke. Ruth however pronounced that she did not like the place because it was so 'abgefuckt', which is a 'german' word which means pretty much what you think it means. Awesome.

Got home very late/early, lazed around some, wrote about rocks, then went out to a bar to 'celebrate my birthday'. Of course I would have preferred to just go out to a bar without the raised expectations such a grandiose title brings with it, but we had a pleasant time in this strange incredibly trendy looking (in a 1960s decoration way) bar. In london you would pay a premium for the 'arty' atmosphere, but I don't think the pressure to be in the cool arty set is so great here (or perhaps anywhere outside of Shoreditch?), so it was just normal (thus still expensive) prices.

Mostly the rest of the time I have been fiddling with my mapping report and or drinking tea, apart from yesterday evening when we did a bit more christmas marketing. I am still puzzled by christmas markets, they seem like a great idea until you realise that the spirit of christmas isn't small wooden carved animals, hanging mobiles and incense shops. At least the gluhwein is good.

It snowed here for a while today, but the internet tells me it did that everywhere else as well. A scattering has settled, so maybe lots will fall tonight, but I am not optimistic. besides, tomorrow I have to go to 6 hours of lectures and I'd rather not be in them missing snow drifts.

Der Tom